7 - The Late Middle Ages: Four Remarks Regarding the Present State of Research

Summary

The term “Classical Canon Law” emerges rather late in the historiography.* Apparently of French origin, it appeared in several book titles from the 1930s onwards as “Droit classique de l’Église” (The classic law of the Church). Gabriel Le Bras may take credit for giving the term international recognition through the monumental multi-volume work on the history of law and institutions in the western Church. In the first volume (1955) of this collective work, Le Bras divided the entire development of western canon law into three periods. He assigned the name “l’âge classique” (the classical age) to the middle period, spanning well over 200 years from the time of Gratian’s Decretum (c. 1140) to the outbreak of the Great Western Schism (1378). Hans Erich Feine was clearly influenced by Le Bras when he replaced the previously neutral section title “IV. Periode: Das kanonische Recht” (The canon law) of his influential Kirchliche Rechtsgeschichte in its fourth edition (1964) with “Das klassische kanonische Recht” (The classical canon law).